


The Signal

by PineWreaths



Series: Gravity Scars [5]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gravity Scars AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 03:48:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14440800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PineWreaths/pseuds/PineWreaths
Summary: Someone from the family's past is racing to catch them, as the twins find out they may not be mere twins after all...





	1. Chapter 1

_BRAAANG! BRAAANG!_

 Ms. Johansson rubbed the drowsiness out of her eyes, reaching for the bleating phone. She had anticipated that the weekend would bring some busy sets of callers, but this one began rattling the phone off the hook the second her foot entered her office.

_Of course. Typical, with my luck I’ll get the eager ones rather than letting me wake up in the morning first._

She grabbed it, clearing her throat slightly as she enunciated “Hello, California Child Protection Services, Mia Johansson speaking. Can I help you?”

The voice across the line caused her to shiver; In her line of work, she’d encountered all manners of metaphorical monsters, and defended and shielded as many kids as she could manage from them. Still, none of them caused the little hairs on the back of her neck to prick like this, and she felt herself glancing towards the shadowed corners of her office in the early morning, the sound of voices outside her door sounding distant and muted.

 _“’Ullo, guardian,”_  the voice said, sounding like the…man?… on the other end greeting a friend.  _“I know of where the they have fled, the naive child and the fool, the ones named for the trees who have eluded you.”_

Mia was on edge, but the news about the location of runaway children had her focused and quashing the little nagging voice telling her to get as far away from the phone in her hand and the unnerving voice on the other end as she could.

It took her a moment, but then the riddle of a line clicked into focus.  _“Pines?_  You have knowledge about the whereabouts of the Pines twins?”

_“Of course.”_

Remembrance of the date hit Mia, and she slumped back, her excitement dwindling into a huff of frustration. She took a breath, gingerly holding the phone as she replied “That’s great. Let me know, and I’ll pass the information on to the state patrol; They turned 18 recently, and so are out of our jurisdiction.”

She managed to keep what she believed was all of the bitterness out of her voice, but still she heard a tutting noise as the voice replied  _“What a shame, what a shame. Regardless, their location is yours.”_

The administrator doe for a pen, grabbing it and a rogue pad of sticky notes as the voice spoke again. She frowned, writing down what he said but feeling more and more like this was just a damn prank as she got not an address, but a damn riddle and an eerie one at that.

_“A village was built near the end of the trail,_

_Protections were raised, and all of them failed,_

_Teeth have gone missing in their house of deceit,_

_And when one more is given, their pain is complete._

_Three are the spirits, yet two are the flesh,_

_One more is adrift, amongst all the rest,_

_The watcher beyond, the listener’s seat,_

_All shall be felled like a harvest of wheat.”_

Mia kept as much of a groan of frustration out of her voice as she could, and nearly hissed into the phone.

“That’s not a  _location_ , you jackass. That’s a bit of Shakespearean horror. I need a place, a name.”

_“The Molala called it Matka Was Ya’i. Modoc called it the site of a great evil. But your modern tongue would call it by another name: Gravity Falls.”_

Then the line went dead, and she swore, hanging up the receiver and looking over the scribbled message on the pad. Eyes narrowing, she yanked it off, pulling out a file from her desk marked ‘Pines’ and sticking it to the security-cam photograph of the two of them, hand-in-hand in front of a convenience store in Seattle.

“Same damn place as before? Or are they elsewhere, and our tip had news of where they were going next?”

“Either way, this is a job for the state patrol to enjoy, and for me to finally be able to file away.”

She massaged some feeling and sense into her temples after replacing the phone, and fruitlessly hoped for a quiet rest of her morning.

 

* * *

 

“Director McCorkle? We’ve got it, sir.”

“Does it match the signature profile?” The voice was insistent, pleading almost behind the perfectly-composed manner. Internally, though,a dark streak of frustration that had long simmered finally relieved some tension. _Finally, we officially know what I’ve known for half a century. But now, this time, we can act._

“Yessir. Loud and clear, with a better than 95% match. This dwarfs even the signals we got in ‘81, and all the noise we were getting in 2012. It’s him all right.” The second voice was newer, less experienced, but sure as stone and with a note of both excitement and anticipation. He leaned back, out of the way of the monitor and the little wavy line shown bright as day across the front of it. Above and below it, various algorithms confirmed his statement.

“It’s Pact.”

Then his supervisor stepped forward, leaning a bit on the old cane of hers, the black orb of the grip shining dully in the light despite its scratches. She shifted in the uncomfortable suit, ignoring it for the sake of decorum, and a wide grin split across her wrinkled face. She patted the man on the shoulder, murmuring a bit of glowing praise.

“Good  _job_. He’s a slippery bastard; Every time before has been like nailing jello to a wall, but that voice recognition system your predecessor installed worked brilliantly.”

She took a step backwards as the man went to work, and behind the thick rimmed glasses, she blinked back a sudden tear.  _No, not yet. You can celebrate when it’s over, and not a damned minute earlier missy._

Still, she felt the tear escape anyways as her grin crinkled, her fingers tracing the familiar square outline inside of her suit’s interior pocket.

_I’ve almost got you back._


	2. Chapter 2

The whispering crackle of static echoed around the attic of the Mystery Shack, a Dipper carefully twisted the dial on the radio set. A pair of thick cables led out from the side of the squat box, out the cracked window, and up to a bent and rusted radio aerial jutting into the orange summer evening. Near where Dipper was leaned over in the squat purple wheeled chair, Mabel was hanging upside-down, fiddling with a stubborn swiping game on her phone. As the radio gave an abruptly loud squawk and Dipper responded with a muttered swear and a swat to the side of the device with his free three-fingered hand, Mabel paused the game and rolled over.

“No luck with tuning to that classical music channel you picked up?”

Dipper rolled his eyes. “It’s not a music  _channel_ , Mabel. It’s a radio-wavelength signal I’d received, and I  _think_ it’s not coming from Earth. In fact, I think it might be from-”

“From outer space?” Ford’s interruption caused Dipper to jump and let out an involuntary yell of alarm. Their Grunkle had made a recent upgrade to his prosthetic leg that had cut the noise emissions in half, and the weight by a third. Now it didn’t make a helpful creaking or whirring noise when he came near, startling the twins on more than one occasion in the last few weeks.

“Yeah,” Dipper said, gesturing towards the hissing radio set. “Mostly turn-of-the-century stuff, lots of orchestral bits. They’re not reflecting from a major cloud layer, and as far as I can triangulate they’re-”

“Oh, they’re all over the damned place,” Ford said, before stepping into the room and striding over to the window. He waved towards the sky. “As far as I was able to ascertain, it’s sort of the intergalactic version of flashing your brights at some moron who left their high-beams on while driving towards you. A general ‘Keep it down over there!’, if you will.”

Dipper’s mouth dropped open as Ford continued. “Of course, the journals never accepted my papers. Said it was all ‘just a damn hypothesis’ and ‘supported by a non-significant p-value.’ They lack vision, I tell you, the lot of ‘em.”

Mabel’s brow furrowed. “P-value? That was in the latest segment of my online Statistics class: The lower the better, and  usually less than 0.05 means it’s not caused by random chance! What did you have?”

Ford averted his eyes and mumbled something.

“What was that?”

He mumbled again, slightly more audibly “It was p=0.7, something like that.”

Mabel repressed a snicker, and even Dipper’s mouth shut and he looked slightly self-conscious at his enthusiasm.

“Grunkle Ford, that’s-that’s not really that convincing, unfortunately.”

The older trenchcoated man huffed and paced across the worn attic carpet. “Well, if it weren’t for the damned cloud systems over the valley that the mountains keep pinned in, I could have cut the reflection in half. As it was, I had to work with what I had.”

His frown softened, and he gave a fond smile to his great-niece and nephew.

“In any case, you’d be wasting your time for aliens, ghosts, whatever the case may be except for a trucker on a CB or a police blotter.”

Dipper perked up. “Ghosts? Really?”

Ford nodded firmly. “Everyone knows you can’t find ghosts with radio waves and static. That whole ‘white noise’ nonsense? Pure balderdash. Now, directed resonance cascade radiation, that’s how you find ghosts. It’s tried and true; used it myself, many a time.”

Dipper shrugged, smiling. “Well, Grunkle Ford, I wasn’t necessarily listening for ghosts. Not at first, anyways,” he said, avoiding his sister’s smirk. “Still, I think I’ll keep listening. Never know what might crop up, in post-Weirdmageddon Gravity Falls of all places.”

A slight beeping from a device on Ford’s belt caught his attention. He plucked it off of its holder, squinted at it, adjusted his glasses, and frowned.

“Well, I’ve probably got to go down and make sure the antimatter containment field isn’t acting up again. Have fun with the radio set, Dipper!”

“Wait, antimatter? Isn’t that basically like having a bomb in our-”

With that, the door slammed behind Ford.

Dipper sighed, and smiled. “Well, at least the chances Ford’s going to blow up the Shack are minimal at worst”

Dipper looked to his sister, his slight grin fading to a look of concern at her distant stare. He could see her hands were running over the keloid scars along her back and shoulders where the spaghetti straps and camisole back didn’t cover. As he watched, her rubbing became faster, more frantic, and he could see Mabel’s skin reddening from the harsh friction, even scratching as she began to dig her nails into-

“Mabel!” He was on the bed in an instant, hugging her close, holding her hands gently yet firmly as she struggled against him.

“Mabes, it’s all right. I’m here.” He snuggled against her, feeling her breathing slow from the rapid panting to a more regular pace as he breathed slowly and loudly, and she began to copy his pattern of inhaling, holding, and exhaling. Finally, she gave a little shiver, and snuggled back against him. Her voice was timid, a slight hint of a quaver still in it.

“Oh, Dip, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I-I-I’m so sorry-”

“Mabel.”

“-it’s stupid, I know it’s stupid-”

“ _Mabel_.” She stopped, looking at him with eyes shining with tears. “Mabel, it’s okay. I understand. You don’t need to-you  _shouldn’t_ apologize, ok?”

She wiped a tear from her face with the back of an armwarmer, the gaudy knitted fabric a reassuring sight despite the reminders they brought. The fabric was too itchy, her old sweaters too uncomfortable with where they caught the hardened tissue from her back, burned years ago now.

“I-I should have remembered about how you got burned, Mabes. I didn’t mean to joke about something like that. I’m sorry.”

She gave her brother a little smile, and lightly punched Dipper in the arm.

“Well, in the future you’re going to just have to-”

“ _ssssssshshshshshsHIHshssshshsHAMHshsssss_ ”

The loud hissing outburst from the radio made both of them jump.

_Did you-_

_Yeah._

_Do you think it might be-_

_Maybe._

The telepathic connection of the unearthly bracelets they shared briefly made their thoughts one, as Dipper’s hand squeezed Mabel’s and the metal rings made contact.

Then the link was broken, as Dipper nearly jumped to his feet as another burst of static began. He dropped into his chair, twisting the receiving dial and carefully adjusting the wavelength. As he adjusted, Mabel sat on the bed edge near him.

“Dipper, so what if it’s ghosts? Grunkle Ford didn’t seem surprised by them, at least. It sounded like he’s real familiar with locating them.”

Dipper, eyes still fixed on the swinging needle on the dial, nodded tersely. He twisted the dial back, and the burst of static died abruptly. Muttering a few curses upon the electromagnetic spectrum, he turned towards Mabel.

“True, but that’s with a resonance cascade radiation detector, like this.” He held up a small, squat oblong shape in one hand. Its surface appeared to be made up of a series of glowing rectangular boxes each about the size of a pair of card decks on top of each other. These orange-yellow cylinders were arranged in a circle, and it made an audible whirring noise as it rotated gently along the radio aerial cable.

“I installed it earlier, to filter out paranormal voices: they were flooding out the signal otherwise.”

To demonstrate, he leaned forward, snapping off a switch on the top. Immediately, the static was filled with whispers, snippets of children’s laughter, reverberated screaming, and a cacophony of other unnerving sounds. The switch was snapped back on, and they disappeared as soon as they came.

“Mabes, I wanted to hear what else was out there.”

Mabel, however, was staring at something else: a pair of rocks, carved runes along their sides, glowing a faint white-blue. They were held in place, clamped over the cable with a rubber band, and the light the runes emitted seemed to make the room’s corner even darker than it already was in the warm light from the desk lamps and electric lantern.

“What are… _those_ for?”

Dipper looked from his sister to the runestones, biting his lip and tapping his knee, before leaning forward and carefully pulling the rubber band off and lifting up one of the stones. Breaking the connection had an immediate effect of killing the glow, but both of the Pines twins shivered as the static went dead silent on the radio.

It wasn’t the silence of an inactive device, but a pregnant, waiting silence. It felt as if the radio was quenching all of the ambient sounds, the noise of their own breaths, their own heartbeats, all fading to a dull blankness.

Mabel recognized the sensation, and could feel bile rising in her throat. Dipper put his finger to his lips, glancing significantly towards the radio microphone, and was about to lower the stone when the radio emitted a faint, echoing sound.

“…… _hhhhhhIhhh_ …. _hhhhAMhhh_ …”

Mabel’s brow furrowed in confusion, before her eyes widened, and she shot her hand out to grasp Dipper’s, their bracelets clanking together faintly in the radio’s looming silence once again.

_Dip, that didn’t sound like Pact._

_I know…_

_I mean, this IS designed to filter out whatever freaky-deaky paranormal demon wavelength Pact operates on, right? Did I at least guess that right?_

Dipper grimaced.

_Definitely. In theory, yeah, this is basically us hearing the void between dimensions, home of our ‘favorite’ demonic entity._

Mabel’s look of confusion returned as she squinted at the radio suspiciously.

_But, so, hang on. Just hang on. Pact never impersonated us, right brobro?_

_As far as I remember. He mocked us once or twice, but never anything like an honest attempt._

_But he…he_ could  _do that if he wanted, right? All-powerful demon and all that?_

Dipper shrugged.

_I mean, sure, it’s possible. But that doesn’t strike me as his style. Pact seems to like making an upfront and honest bargain, because it makes the suffering later all the sweeter for not having been under false pretenses._

_So why did that voice sound like…_

_…like me?_

Dipper swallowed as Mabel nodded. Against his better judgement, he reached out for the microphone. He felt his sister’s hand on his arm, and saw her look of concern, but instead squeezed her fingers, cleared his throat, and spoke.

“Uh, hello? Anyone out there?”

There was nothing but silence for long moments, as Dipper wondered if he’d made a mistake, before a voice echoed back.

_“…I…Am…”_

“Yes?”

_“…I…Am…T-”_

The voice seemed to halt, and Dipper tried to offer suggestions.

“You’re, uh, tired?”

Silence.

“Uh, timid? Ow!”

He shot Mabel a dirty look as she whacked his shoulder, but then she leaned in to the mic.

“You’re trapped?”

The voice almost sounded like static again as it sighed a breath of release.

_“…Yes…Trapped…Between…”_

“Between? Between where?”

Dipper’s gaze was locked down, to where a crackling arc of blue-green electricity was arcing between the orange module he had installed on the cable, and the halves of the runestones. Mabel saw where he was staring, and stammered back into the microphone.

“You-you’re between worlds! I mean, not really like dimensions, but between like wherever ghosts are, and the place between dimensions, right?”

The voice did not reply for a long second, and when it did it was notably quieter.

_“…Weak…Fading…”_

Dipper had already begun to try and boost the power, opening up the receiver power input to maximum. Already he could see one of the components glowing a deep cherry-red from the overload of power through it, and Dipper knew it was only another minute before it would blow completely.

It was no use. The voice continued to fade to almost a whisper.

“Don’t go! Not yet! We don’t even know who you are!”

_“…Remember…”_

Mabel’s voice was tense.

“Remember? Remember what?”

_“…I…Am…T-”_

“Yeah, you already told us: you’re trapped! We get it. Now how do you-”

_“…I…Am…Tyrone…”_

Then the voice was gone. Dipper and Mabel waited in silence, avoiding each-other’s eyes, but after a long minute Dipper’s radio finally gave up under the strain. There was a loud POP and a puff of blue-black oily smoke, and the signal and lights died.

As their breathing and heartbeats pounded in their ears again, Mabel finally gasped out the words they had been sharing with no telepathic bracelets needed:

“Our brother is  _alive_?”

 

* * *

 

“Kids, this is a fool’s errand-”

Dipper glared at his Grunkle Ford. “Like hell it is. We just spoke with a ghost, one that’s trapped  _outside_ of the dimension ghosts normally haunt, and he said he was our brother.”

Grunkle Stan stepped forward from where he had been leaning against a wall with a Pitt soda.

“Dipper, your brother died when you were born. You really need to be-”

This time Mabel snapped at their grizzled relative.

“Oh, not you  _too_! Grunka Stan, we both have a, well, a  _feeling_ about this,” she said, glancing to Dipper, who nodded in understanding. “Like, yeah, it might be an evil demony trap, but what if it’s  _not_? We can’t afford to risk doing  _nothing_.”

Stan chuckled, and Ford joined in with a smile. “Who said anything about doing nothing?”

Mabel cocked her head. “Wait, but didn’t you just say we needed to-”

“-to be  _careful_ , and cautious, when going about this,” Stan finished. “Kid, there’s nothing saying you can’t walk into a trap if you want to, and if you know the risks.” He wagged a finger. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t go in without backup.”

The younger twins’ eyes widened.

“Backup? So you’re going to-?”

Stan just grinned and nodded. Dipper turned back to Ford, who put a hand on his shoulder.

“Dipper, I was saying it was a fool’s errand to try it with the setup you were going to use.” He gestured to the blueprint Dipper had drafted, of another aerial and radio receiver to replace the damaged and rusted one in an attempt to boost the signal. The aerial was actually two parallel antennae: one hooked up to the runestone, and the other to the ghost-blocker module.

“I agree with your assessment that the signals are entangling, and that you need a dual signal in order to clean up the background. But from what you said, your, well, your  _brother_ used up most of whatever strength he had in contacting you at all.”

He gave his grand-nephew an understanding smile, his eyes glimmering near the edges. “He’s done so much already, but now it’s our turn to go the rest of the way. We need to boost the signal, but more importantly we need way more sensitivity than these aerials would provide.”

Dipper, who was nodding through Ford’s explanation, frowned. “But, well, for more sensitivity we would need exponentially larger antennae. Where the heck would we be able to find a few miles of spare parallel wires?

To this, Ford just looked to Stan, who grinned, and held up an Amtrak ticket, which fanned to become four tickets.

“So, kids, who wants to see how long we can ride a train until they have to kick us off?”


	3. Chapter 3

“Are you sure that’s reading right?”Agent Power leaned forward, tapping the display indicator. On it was a map of the western coast states, and a brilliant scarlet line was superimposed over almost half of the middle of Oregon. The specialist sitting at the computer’s desk just sighed and rolled her eyes, looking to Director McCorkle.

“Agent, it’s right.” She tapped a gold-ringed finger on the porcelain eight-ball topper on her cane, the slight  _clinking_ blending in with the background hums and whirs of the nerve center computers. “If anyone can figure out how to jury-rig a railway into a radio receiver so powerful NORAD gives us a call, it’s Stanley and Stanford Pines.”

Agent Trigger snickered, a surprising noise from the operatives normal deep voice. “Speaking of which, Madam Director, how  _did_ you convince them to drop it? NORAD’s not the type to be dissuaded by talk of signals reflected off of marsh gas or weather balloons.”

She grinned, two gold teeth glittering near the back of her mouth. “Well, the general in charge of operations over there is an old, dear friend, and we simply had a brief, amicable discussion regarding our respective spheres of influence and where where we might better synergize in the future.”

There was a brief silence, broken by Agent Trigger.

“You threatened to use some sort of forbidden and arcane magic to disarm the world’s nuclear arsenal again, didn’t you?”

Her grin grew wider.

“What, and leave him out of a job and struggling to explain to his commanders how he overstepped his authority in not backing down when asked?  _Perish_ the thought.”

Her attention turned back to the monitor as the two agents shared her grin. “Sampson, talk to me: do we have birds in the air?”

The specialist at the computer nodded. “Yessir. Dispatched them from McChord and Beale. We’re anticipating being on-site within two hours.”

“Nicely done,” the suited woman murmured. “Good initiative: we don’t want to give a slippery target any more time to wriggle away, if we can avoid it.”

She leaned back, and began to make her way towards her office. Stepping past the worn threshold, the wood and cement contrasted against outdated paint and dusty spackle, she settled heavily into her chair with a loose “ _Whuf_.”

“Ah, the ravages of age, eh Carla?” She looked up to see a regional supervisor, Henry Woodhouse, hand paused in preparation to knock. She waved him in, pulling out a small silver flask and a pair of glasses.

“A damn shame about the lack of ice, but I guess we’ve got to save taxpayer dollars where we can. Could I interest you in a glass?” She raised an eyebrow, and Henry smiled but waved a hand.

“Thanks, but no: I’m a whisky man myself, and I’ve heard the, eh, ‘rumors’ regarding the strength of your own preferred label.”

She shrugged, putting the second glass back, and proceeding to pour herself a few fingers of the rich purple liquor. It caught the light as she swirled it, capping and replacing the flask, before taking a long, luxurious sip.

“Ah, god  _damn_ that’s more like it.” Her eyes flicked up to the supervisor. “So, Henry, what can I do you for?”

Pulling his eyes away from the glass, Henry sighed. “We lost our lead on the Dakota incident: source turned up dead in a hotel room, called by the police as a ‘suicide.’ Two shots to the back of the head, close range, and the local sheriff is clamming up.”

She steepled her fingers, groaning. “Damn. You think they’re staying quiet for fear or a payoff?”

He pushed up his glasses with a finger, shuffling through the folder of notes he had under his arm and squinting at handwritten memos and blurry photographs. “It depends: we’re still torn between this being a clear pattern of a Changeling, what with the difficulty in tracking and the tendency to shed identities like rain. That would say a payoff. On the other hand, we’ve had two other potential links turn up as mysterious ‘suicides,’ each improbable at best when you comb over the details. Each while the victim was alone, and not in their hometown. That sounds more like a-”

“-a rogue Helpful Stranger. Ugh, those always leave me with a bad taste in my mouth afterwards.”

From the doorway,a surprised voice said “Wait, a ‘Helpful what?’”

Jerking around, Henry frowned, and then sighed. “Come in, Melissa. Car-er,  _Director_ McCorkle, this is  _Assistant_ Regional Supervisor, and our new hire, Melissa Jackson.”

The young woman almost bounded in, her wide excited smile framed by a head full of dark curls. However, the smile faded under Supervisor Woodhouse’s withering glare. However, Carla’s smile helped a glimmer of it return.

“Well, glad to have you onboard, and here’s to many happy years ahead.” She raised her glass and inclined her head in a nod, before sipping and continuing. “A Helpful Stranger is a class of humanoids, mostly-human in appearance, but with faces that are unmemorable, unphotographable, and cause distinct unease if looked at directly for too long. They’ve typically got a Guardian designation, as they mostly help humans find lost objects or dropped and misplaced items. Sometimes they help with menial tasks or a quick word or two, but never interactions lasting more than a few dozen seconds at most.”

His frown fading slightly, Henry spoke up. “You ever have someone help you find a pen, pick up a book you dropped or a paper from a stack of documents? Someone friendly and helpful, but not a close friend or acquaintance?”

She nodded.

“Describe to me their appearance the last time this happened. What they were wearing, or their hair color, or a distinct item like jewelry or glasses. You remembering anything?”

Melissa frowned, concentrating, before her eyes widened. At this, both Henry and Carla shared a chuckle. “See, there you go!”

Carla followed that up with “Now and again, though, you get a one that goes bad. The cleanup on locating and disabling a target who is literally hard on the eyes is a pain, let me assure you. That’s not to even mention the thunderstorms we keep bumping into-”

Carla’s head shot up. “Wait, thunderstorms? Is each corresponding with or directly in the aftermath of the murders?”

Henry nodded slowly, turning to leaf through his sheaf of reports. “I believe so…Yeah, it looks like it. Why?”

Carla chuckled, and took another long sip of her deeply-colored drink. “Well, in that case you’re probably looking at a weather-wight. Damn lucky you mentioned that, as I’d expect it would be a distinctly unpleasant shock to see your target simply phase through a silvered cage for catching a Stranger or a Changeling.”

This time it was Henry’s turn to cock his head. “Weather-wight? But aren’t those found primarily in Europe?”

“True, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find ‘em elsewhere. They draw on the appearances of everyone buried in their graveyard of origin, which is where the changeling-like appearance shifting is coming in: I’d suspect you’d have another decade or two of tracking at the minimum before you’d have an outside chance at the wight running out of faces to hide as.”

“Ok then, but what about the shootings? The ‘suicides’?”

She shrugged. “Weather-wights are oddly trendy, as far as paranormal semi-intelligent entities go. They’ve adopted human weapons quite readily, and they can become corporeal easily enough to manipulate small objects like firearms. I’ve heard a faction of the Russian mob has even taken to try and use them as a sort of hitman, but with mixed success.”

“As for the murders, check the records: ten bucks says each of the victims has a now-deceased absolute scumbag of a relative-”

“And? Every family has an asshole or two.”

“-and all of these relatives will be  _buried in the same damn graveyard.”_

Henry shut his mouth mid-protest, before leaning back and whistling. Turning partially towards Melissa, he gestured towards the Director. “And that, Ms. Jackson, is why she gets the big office.”

He stood, still shaking his head. “Less than five minutes, and you cracked a case that had us stalled for a solid two weeks. Sure I can’t convince you to give up the big desk and office, and come move back into Regional Affairs?”

She shook her head. “Afraid not, Henry. We just had a breakthrough on the Pact file, and I want to make sure we don’t squander our window of opportunity.”

He nodded, and she ignored Melissa’s look of curiosity as she closed her office door. Behind the thin wood, she could hear the beginning of a question, before it was cut off by Henry’s muffled voice.

“For now, Ms. Jackson, it’s a classification above your pay grade.”

Sitting back in her chair, Carla drained the last sip of her drink, swirling the shimmering dregs at the bottom of the glass, before leaning back. Though comfortable, the soft upholstery was making her back itch, and she ran a hand slowly under the jacket, feeling the fingertips rub and drift over the lumpy, wrinkled, and uneven old scars across her shoulders.

_I’d been afraid it could be another decade before we’d finally pick up Pact’s trail, and now we get two leads in as many days._

_Only a few more hours now until I can right some very old wrongs._

_Only a few more hours._

 

* * *

 

The rumble of the train was almost an afterthought now, and Ford was alongside Dipper as they fiddled and tuned a radio set. This time it was wired to Ford’s laptop, numerous thick cables leading out of the room, the orange regulator and actively-glowing runestones, and a portable and probably-somewhat-illegal fusion cell. The cell design was from from his time in the portal, and wasn’t supposed to be invented for another fifty years.

As for the cabling leading to a hole stealthily drilled in the flooring, those lead down to the set of receiver modules Ford and Dipper had installed while Stan and Mabel had distracted the rail station attendants.

Over the last half-hour or so, though, Stanley had started to become increasingly jumpy.

“Ford, c’mon, how much longer until you get your spooky ghost on the air and we can get outta here?” He shot a quick glance zipping from the window, to the surreptitious floor-hole, to the closed cabin door.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Nonsense, Stanley. You’re just getting jumpy over nothing!”

“Nothing? Last time I did something less-than-legal on a train, I was kicked off, with a lifetime ban to boot!”

Dipper frowned. “Grunkle Stan, didn’t you say once that you were caught trying to transport unpasteurized milk across multiple state lines? Was that via…train?”

Not taking his eyes off of his brother, Stanley shrugged and smiled weakly. “Well, a friend of a friend had told me about the money to be had, and I couldn’t…resist…”

He trailed off; Mabel was leaned up against the window, staring and squinting out it. Brow furrowing, her Grunkle stepped over to look too.

“Whatcha see, pumpkin?”

“Grunkle Stan, you remember when you recommended I brush up on aircraft profiles a few years back?”

“Yep. Was for a very important,  _entirely_ mostly legal job. Why?”

“Well, there’s a helicopter that’s been paralleling us for the last few minutes. At first I thought it was news, but the profile is too wide. It’s not white or orange, just black, so it’s probably not medevac. What do you think?”

As she finished, she turned back in surprise. “Oh, and it looks like they’re headed our way now too!”

His face drained. Stomping over to the window, he wrenched it open, ignoring the protests of Dipper and Ford as he strained to listen. Almost as quickly as it was opened, the window was shut.

“Just as I feared: it’s a Blackhawk.”

Turning to the assembled faces, Stan tugged on his suit coat and straightened the tie.

“Well everybody, looks like we’re going to be having company after all.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Can this be portable in the next three minutes?”

Ford stammered for a second, then blurted out “M-maybe? Stanley, this is a complicated piece of machinery, to say nothing of the fixed location of the rail antennae conductors we installed-”

There was a garbled burst of static from the radio, a whispering breathy noise audible even through the rumble of the train car.

He turned back to his brother triumphantly. “See? It’s already producing measurable results!”

Grunkle Stan gritted his teeth. “Sixer, if this contraption isn’t portable in two and a half minutes, we’re going to have God knows what sort of special forces knocking violently on the door, and I suspect they won’t give a damn what sort of ‘measurable results’ you’ve found.”

His eyes glittered dangerously for a moment. “Take it from a lifelong criminal element, Ford: know when to cut and run. This is one of those times.”

The twins locked eyes for a moment, before Ford threw up his hands in a frustrated sigh. Dipper was already working on hooking up another boxy device to the radio set, as Ford began to yank cushions out of the seat after voicing his approval.

“Good plan. Let me cut an entry hole for the cabling, and I think we can still receive a strong signal if you wire the transmitter antenna wire up the back of the seat.” He flipped open a futuristic-looking pocketknife, and a three-inch plasma blade hissed into life. There was a puff of acrid smoke, and then a sizzle as it cut a neat scorched hole in the side of the plastic chair housing. The radio and associated devices were quickly unplugged, nestled into the normally-inaccessible space below the seat. Cables were reattached, and the whole affair was then hidden by the replacement of the seat panel and cushion.

Dipper triumphantly hefted what looked like a misshapen walkie-talkie, and clicking the power on resulted in a familiar crackle of static.

Stanley, who had been watching his wristwatch the whole time and tapping an impatient foot, clapped his hands together.

“Great! Now, our guests have almost arrived, so it’s time to find a hiding place, or barring that, a place we can make a quick disembark from.”

Even as he spoke, the sound of the helicopter rotors was clearly audible over the background noises of the traincar. Maybe it was Dipper’s imagination, but he could almost already hear the sound of footsteps across the top of the car.

Making their way out of the cabin and down the hallway to the next car, Dipper continued fiddling with adjustments to the controller, occasionally passing it back and forth between him and Ford as they tried to tune into the right settings.

Ford grimaced as they ducked past a family with squealing toddlers and a very harangued-looking mother and father. “Oh come  _on_ : we’re working with almost a hundred and fifty miles of contiguous tracks, so there’s  _got_ to be some combination that can-”

Abruptly, the static that had been fading overall as Ford and Dipper adjusted the settings this way and that died, replaced by a clearly-audible yet quiet breathing. Ford gave a whoop of excitement, echoed by Dipper even as other passengers within earshot gave them odd looks.

The excitement was cut short by the set of thumping boots on the traincar roof, clear and distinct even before the sound of a drill began in earnest. The first screw of the overhead hatch dropped to fall at the Pines family’s feet.

“Move then talk,” Grunkle Stan nearly chanted, as he grabbed his brother by one wrist and Dipper by the other to yank them behind him towards the next car. “Move,  _then_ talk.”

It wasn’t until three cars later that Stan finally stopped, and ushered the others into an empty cabin. After cautiously glancing out and then lowering the blinds, he finally took a cautious sigh of relief.

“Okay, I think we’ve bought some time. Not  _much_ time, of course, but some.”

Mabel cocked her head. “Why didn’t we go all the way to the back?”

Leaning back in the seat, Stanley chuckled and grinned.

“Because they’re probably expecting us to high-tail it out of there. If I were them, I’d have put a team down on our car, on the rear, and probably one at the front, just to be safe.” He nodded towards the closed and shuttered door. “They’ll be sweeping towards each-other, so picking the midpoint between our original cabin and the back of the train gives us the most time to work with before they reach us.”

Mabel made a little “ _Oooooh_ ” of understanding, before going to meet Dipper and Ford over by the handheld controller and receiver. The breathing was still audible, and so with a careful slow breath of his own, Dipper tensed, and thumbed the ‘Send’ button.

“Uh, h-hello there?”

There were a lot of things the Pines might have expected the entity on the other side to do, ranging from horrible nightmare-inducing shocks to outright ignoring them.

What they hadn’t expected was an almost girlish shriek of alarm.

_“Gaaah! What the hell?”_

“Uh, who is this? We received your earlier message, but-”

_“D-Dipper? It’s me! It’s Tyrone! Holy crap, I wasn’t able to sustain the radio signal strength, and was catching my breath to try again!”_

“Wel, we boosted the receiver strength, so we could-” Dipper paused.

“Wait, ‘catch your breath’? Tyrone, we’ve been out of contact with you for half a week. H-How long have you been resting?”

There was an echoing chuckle.  _“An hour, maybe two: It was a draining experience. I’m not surprised the time dilation stuff is weird, given the weirdness of my general living situation.”_

This time Grunkle Ford cleared his throat and spoke up.

“Tyrone, it’s Ford. Uh, your Grunkle; not that we’ve spoken before, but yes, well, it’s never too late to make a first impression and all that-”

Tyrone’s voice chuckled through the radio.

_“Hi Grunkle Ford. Nice to, well, nice to meet you at long last. What’s up?”_

“Well, Tyrone, I’ve spoken with many a ghost in my day, but you’re-well, you’re different. You’re in between the Void and our dimension, rather than haunting our dimension like most spirits. You age as well: you’re the same age as Mabel and Dipper from the sounds of it, rather than un-aging at the time of your death. And speaking of death-”

The temperature in the cabin seemed to drop a few degrees as Ford asked. “-how  _did_ you become a ghost? You don’t sound purpose or vengeance-driven, so how and  _why_ are you here?”

 _“I…I’m not sure. It was ages, years, before I had even begun to realize what I was, what had happened. At times, it seemed like moments would pass you two by as I struggled to survive a rush of months.”_  The voice on the other end of the radio took a deep, heavy breath.

_“It wasn’t until Dipper used the copy machine that I found out what my name should have been. When those clones died, either then or in the woods in the weeks afterwards in the Oregon fall rains, I was nearby, and was able to absorb a part of them in their passing. It gave me memories: not enough to recall everything, but enough to boost my awareness from a half-remembered fever dream to my current, still-trapped state.”_

_“Let’s just say that I believe Pact has more than a little to do with it. He enabled me to even speak at all in this trapped state, an event I have been looking forward to for a long time. In any case, it sounds like it also spent my remaining bargainable wish uses with the demon as well.”_

There was a long pause, each of the Pines members with their jaws open in shock. Finally Stanley gave a low whistle.

“Well hell, kid, it sounds like you’ve been in some real shit then. Heh.” The trademark grin returned. “Welcome to the family!”

There was a clatter from outside the cabin, as the door on one end of the traincar slid open. Stan straightened, squinted out, and swore before ducking back down.

“Well, it’s both better and worse than I feared: it’s the Feds.”

“Wait, ‘Feds’ as in ‘Federal agents?” Ford snorted. “We’ve beaten them before. What’s the bad news?”

“That it’s not simple mercenaries. Mercs, I can deal with: Offer enough resistance, enough of a payday, and they’ll look the other way. Feds, though, are tenacious. They’re paid by the hour.”

He sighed. “The over-under is that we’re less likely to get shot if they find us, but the downside is that they’re  _way_ more likely to find us.”

Reinforcing his point was the distant sound of a cabin door sliding open and a muffled, barked conversation. Stanley looked off in the direction of the search, before turning back to their own cabin window.

“Hey, Mabel honey, how long does that trip app of your say it was going to be until we’re over another body of water?”

Mabel tapped on her phone a few times, wincing. “Uh, Grunkle Stan, I don’t suppose we’d be okay for, say, another 47 minutes?”

He snorted. “Mabel, sweety, I think we’d be in trouble in another  _four_ minutes.” He stepped over to their window, looking out at the view of the forest racing by and muttering to himself.

“Hmmm. Lots of boulders, thin grass, and treeline doesn’t start for another three hundred feet.” He eyed the window opposite of the door, across the exterior hallway from their door.

“Thick bushes, and almost immediately after that is the treeline. Best chance we’re gonna get, I think.”

He clapped and rubbed his hands together. “All right, Pines! We are making out exit, via  _that_ window,” he said, pointing. “Departing ASAP. Dipper and Sixer, you ready to scram?”

Tyrone’s voice was tight and panicked, but Dipper did his best to reassure him.

“Hey, Ty, it’ll be alright: if we were able to do this once, we can do it again. So we’ll talk soon, okay?”

There was a disappointed acknowledgement, and Dipper reluctantly snapped the set off.

“Great. Now, if we go piecemeal there’s a chance we’ll be tackled once they spot us. So, instead we’re going all together. On three, okay?”

The others nodded.

“One.”

Dipper and Mabel tensed, and Ford put on a pair of goggles pulled from one of his myriad pockets.

“Two.”

Dipper grabbed Mabel’s hand for a squeeze, the bracelets tapping together.

_Good luck, Mabes. I love you._

_Love you too, brobro., and good luck to you as well._

“Three!”

The cabin door almost burst open from the four bodies pushing through it. Dipper abstractedly heard a shout of alarm, but he was focused on the one step, then two, then tree, and the leap he took after Stan leapt. The window spiderwebbed and resisted for a moment before the combined weight of both older twins punched through, popping the window out of it’s frame.

Carried forward in mid-jump, Dipper and Mabel soared through the opening, and Dipper saw a flash of white and blue and grey and brown before something hit him like a jackhammer and everything went dark.


	5. Chapter 5

Carla looked over at Agent Trigger. “And you lost them when, exactly?”

The agent shifted nervously, glancing from the stopped train to the wooded forest. “Uh, we believe around an hour ago. Thanks to on-site agents, we know the exact time they disembarked, and can pinpoint their initial location to within less than a quarter-mile.”

She smiled humorlessly. “Why do I sense there’s a ‘ _but_ ’ coming on, Trigger?”

“Well, ma’am, it’s a big forest, and we didn’t have any boots on the ground for at least fifteen minutes after they disembarked. Every minute we can’t find them exponentially expands their possible current whereabouts.”

“Well, we neither have the luxury of time nor daylight. My superiors have indicated that this case’s resolution is long overdue, and they’re itching to finally have a solid set of eyewitness accounts before advancing with leveraging the Pact entity as an asset.”

She sighed, and keyed a communication’s earbud and microphone dangling from one ear. “Attention all personnel: You are hereby authorized and cleared for use for all non-lethal methods of tracking down the Pines, including warehoused case materials, artifacts, and implements up to Grimm-category 2. Note that all bans on use of sentient non-human entities are still in effect, and training is still required for indicated equipment. Director out.”

There was a low murmur of surprise from the assembled agency members, before several agents began rushing off in assorted directions. Carla just nodded to Agent Trigger.

“Get it done.”

She rubbed her temples as the man darted off, but it was secretly a feeling of relief.

_The headaches have been gone for days now. Ever since the recording came in._

She lowered her hands, taking a deep breath and looking off into the sea of treetops.

_It’s all finally falling into place._

Ever since…well, ever since the  _event_ , ever since she had taken on a new name, a new identity, a new purpose, Carla had headaches. Daydreams. Nightmares. Visions of what had been, what could be. How the pieces of her life could fall into place, or fall apart. Ways it  _had_ come together or shattered, once upon a time.

At first they were unbearable, causing stabbing pains resulting in dropped coffees at a government internship. She heeded certain avenues, avoiding the partnership at the CIA and being rewarded by the first full week of sleep in half a decade. Another repeated mantra, a scream in her mind, kept her away from an operation in the Balkans that would have ended in blood and a final gasp according to the brief and pessimistic mission debrief dossier she had obtained afterwards.

Working backwards, she could piece together parts of information; educated guesses as to what had come before. Never dancing with Stanley meant his life remained tethered to the East Coast. Never leaving him meant two brothers not reuniting until the opportune moment had long passed. Directly travelling to Gravity Falls would catch the family too early, still scattered across unresolved feuds and undiscovered kinships, and unfocus the relationships that needed time to flourish. Attempts to force the meetings early resulted in suspicion, hostile and even dangerous encounters, and ultimately failure. Revelation of her knowledge resulted in being shunned, then captured, then experimented on. Attempting to work alone meant being preempted by this very agency, as their superior resources and manpower beat her to her objective.

She rubbed her forehead again as she stepped back into the helicopter, the rotor wash sending bushes spinning and thrashing in place.

_Is it really an objective, or more just the key to the prison?_

And each time, the memory of the voice. The low, gurgling laughter, gloating at her umpteenth failure and chance to torture her anew. The milky-white eyes, staring at her  from over the shoulder of Stanford Pines, alone in his cabin as she told him a story he was never meant to hear. The curled talons, scratching idly into a psychiatric hospital’s wall as yet another dose of tranquilizer was forcibly administered. The flap of impossibly-oily feathers, blotting out the sun alongside the cold face of the Balkan turncoat who had shot her. Each time, that stanza reverberating in her mind:

_“Tried to cheat, tried to hide._

_Tried to halt time’s endless tide._

_A bargain made, a deal too soon,_

_A savior’s choice inflicting ruin._

_A promise kept, a daunting hike,_

_All to repeat a lightning strike.”_

She had puzzled over it for years, decades, maybe even centuries by this point, and had sussed out what she needed to do

Carla-

No, that name was another disguise,a costume among many.

No,  _Mabel_ needed to find out how to repeat the circumstances that led her into this undying loop. All so that this time, she could make the bargain she needed rather than the one she wanted. All so that she could repeat a moment that she had forgotten the specifics of, one she had to rediscover through a hundred failed lifetimes, an instant predetermined to be  _deja vu_.

The clouds had already begun to gather, despite the sunset being a few hours off yet, and light was already fading as the distant hills rumbled with thunder.

_The lightning was in the background. A flash of light, of thunder, marked the instant where I made the wrong choice and began this living hell._

The pilot’s voice cut into her thoughts over the headset.  _“Director, looks like we might be getting some chop here soon if that storm cell continues to form. Did you want me to set you down, while we can still land safely?”_

She nodded, raising her voice to be heard over the roar of the engine and rushing wind. “Sounds great, Peters! Just set me down by, ah, over at the head of group four, over to the east ridge.”

The pilot gave her a thumbs-up, before she steered them towards the ridge. As they dropped low enough to start making out the individual trees, her earpiece crackled to life as she could see an agent waving to her from below, three-piece suit flapping in the wind.

_“Glad you could make it, Director. I just received word that one of our forward teams had eyes on the targets in the last five, and we’re moving to encircle and lock down their movement options.”_

She nodded, feeling nearly all of the last vestiges of twinges in her head fade as the memories solidified again.

_It was one of the government men, one of the ones chasing us. They tripped, or Stan or Ford made a motion and spooked them, and they-_

A slight  _pop_ could be heard over the seamless roar of the helicopter, and her earpiece became a flood of shouted instructions.

_“Shots fired! Shots fired in Grid B-4-Delta. Repeat, shots fired in-”_

_“Eyes on target; they are immobilized and holding position. Wait, one of them is-”_

_“Damn it, who fired without my authorization? Check fire unless explicitly authorized to-”_

_“We have a target down! Young adult male, bullet wound to lower torso. Condition critical; repeat, condition-”_

She was already tearing out of the helicopter, running as fast as creaking joints could carry her. The rotor wash and building winds whipped her brown curls into her face and mouth, but she shook them away as she ran. The agent who had contacted her on her approach-Agent Hatim, a recent promotion from the cataloguing department-was running alongside her, briefing her as best as he could.

The briefing had barely ended before they were within sight of the Pines. Ford was bent over Dipper, who was moaning and holding his bleeding stomach. Stanley was in a fighting stance, facing towards the other four agents who had approached to detain them and try to aid Dipper.

And Mabel was kneeling on the ground, muttering, forgotten by the others. One agent watched her, unsure, even as her eyes glinted a spectrum of hate and rage back at him.

_I almost remember the incantation myself. Pact never replied; unsurprising, since this loop is technically my last permitted bargain anyhow._

The memories were almost crystal-clear now: Pact emerging, the flash of lightning and thunder, and the final bargain made in error:

_“I want to keep my brother safe.”_

This was the tipping point, and even as a flash of lightning lit the sky and a peal of thunder chased after it, she could see the wisps of inky smoke gathering near young Mabel.

_I need to change my mind._

_Now, before the moment passes._

Pact was saying something, the wind whipping around the clearing, but the sky remained clear.

_Was the lightning and thunder too early? Is it about to strike again?_

Her shoulder twinged, the change in pressure making it ache, and all became clear.

Lifting her gun, she could hear Agent Hatim’s protests, almost from a great distance.

“Madam Director,  _don’t_! If you shoot the Pact entity, it could be like the ‘81 case all over again! You’d be killed!”

She gritted her teeth.

“Good thing I’m not aiming for  _him_ then.”

The pistol kicked in her hand, the flash of light and deafening shout of the report replacing every other sensation for a split second.

Mabel’s torso twisted where she knelt on the needle-scattered loam, before she slowly sat upright. Her shoulder was bleeding freely, but she seemed to pay it no heed.

For the first time, Mabel Pines the elder remembered everything.

_Heh. Seems that it wasn’t a “rotator cuff injury” after all._

She remembered back to that night, and felt a note of hope and elation she hadn’t felt before, ever.

She remembered speaking different words, words borne out of a realization that she wouldn’t live forever, that words that had the few extra seconds of consideration needed to tighten the terms.

_“I want the Pines to be safe, all of us, forever.”_

Pact rose to an impossible height, roaring with what must have seemed like rage. Mabel, however, recognized it as something else entirely:

Satisfaction.

Stanley, Ford, and even Dipper were shouting now, futilely, as Pact swooped down to engulf the younger Mabel, vanishing her within his weeping mass.

The demon turned to the other Pines, and said some words the elder Mabel couldn’t make out over the sounds of the storm. Then he turned his attention to her.

Ford was squinting at her already, but then Stanley said something that caused a look of shock across all of their faces. Shrugging, Mabel grinned and gave them some slightly-arthritic finger-guns, before turning her attention to the demon.

_“Foolish woman, you are persistent, and through this you have earned this rebalancing.”_

His form seemed to grow, looming over her like a cliff as he glided closer.

_“But this must be balanced, in the end. A final collection, for a final tooth, for a final collection.”_

Mabel rolled her neck, hearing a crack as she grinned. “Seems about right.”

Pact swooped forward, and the last thing Mabel felt was a humid, all-encompassing darkness.


	6. Epilogue

Hunched over the dimly-lit table, Dipper flipped through the three-ring binder. Lifting it up temporarily to get a better look at one page in the light, the cover is revealed: a grainy black-and-white scan of a journal cover, the image of a hand painted with the number ‘1’ clearly visible.

On the other end of the table, in between where drips of water from the stalactites above have stained the wood veneer, was a wooden cube the size of a large lunchbox. The wood is a white soft pinewood originally, stained since and purposefully carved in an incredibly-intricate filigree. Images of men, animals, and things that are neither yet all too real adorn the sides, locked in images of cooperation, of hostility, and of bitter conflict and death.

_The wood was easy enough to get, but that carving took more time than I had expected to master._

_Didn’t help either that the stain the first time was missing heather oil, and necessitated starting them over from scratch. Years of work, of my life, gone in a mistaken few minutes._

He paused in his reading, running a hand carefully over the box’s surface as his other hand rubbed the weeks-old stubble under his chin thoughtfully. Each box face had a squat, rectangular orange prism, a shape of metal-edged clear glass, the swirling and crystalline substance within glowing with an orange-yellow light of its own. A finger brushed against it, before trailing up to the lock at the box’s top.

Here, two carved runestone halves, rubbed smooth with use and handling, were affixed at the points where the latch was fastened to the box. The latch was sturdy, but nothing supernatural in and of itself.

_“Funny thing, how everyday stuff can become demon-proof if properly reinforced?”_

Stirred from his thoughts, Dipper turned to smile at the hologram that had brightened to life next to him, the expression crinkling the crows feet he had started to accumulate at the corners of his eyes. The image displayed was that of himself, albeit a decade younger and wearing an oversized grey hoodie and a baseball cap rather than Dipper’s parka and muff-eared winter cap.

The old holo-projector flickered incessantly, a holdover from the damage it sustained in Ford’s pack when he returned through the portal. The ruins of the portal occupied most of the cavern behind him, where Dipper hadn’t moved debris and equipment aside to make room for woodworking tools and benches.

“Yeah. Still, I’m glad we splurged on the twenty-dollar latch from the hardware store, instead of getting one at the Dollar Market like Grunkle Stan had suggested.”

_“Agreed. Still, Dip, we’re not missing anything, are we? No forgotten ingredients, no unrecited incantations, that whole bit?”_

Turning back to the scanned pages of the first Journal, Dipper sighed.

“Truth be told, Ty, I’m not sure. We’ve double- and triple-checked, but this is unexplored territory.”

He flipped through the pages, indicating the notes Ford had made for the barrier meant to ward away Pact. “I mean, Ford had some ideas for how to affect and restrict him-” Flipping a few pages later, and there was a cave rubbing of the inscribed words and images of one of the neolithic people who had once occupied the valley of Gravity Falls, thousands of years ago. “-and the folks who first encountered him seemed to have some ideas about what to do with him as well, but they’re just two parts to the puzzle.”

Smiling a little, he tapped on the holograph projector, causing another flicker.

“Besides, I-we have  _you_ to thank for the last bits. After we got a fix on your presence once Ma…once Mabel’s bargain helped shield your signal, Ford was able to help draw you through, and in the process we found out some valuable information about cross-dimensional binding and corporealization.”

Tyrone’s digital voice was bitter. “ _Yeah, I guess, but it still ended in failure. I’d much rather prefer inhabiting an empty clone to basically haunting this digital matrix.”_

Dipper nodded over towards where a set of three large metal-encased tubes were anchored to a wall. Within, a small humanoid form could be seen.

“Well, you’ll need to be patient. These replications won’t be mature for another fifteen months; any sooner, and you’d be risking a lot of potential damage to satisfy your impatience.”

 _“I know, but the solstice is in_ one  _month! I want to be able to help!”_

Dipper gave him a smile, and after a moment some half-hearted finger-guns as well.

“Hey, brobro, don’t fret it. You’ve been a huge help, and, well-,” Dipper’s voice threatened at being choked up, but he swallowed most of it back down, “Well, you’ve been here when the Grunkles, and especially when I, have really  _needed_ you to be here. To listen, to talk, to be…well,  _family_.”

The hologram said nothing, and just nodded. Dipper thought he could see a glint of tears at the edges of Tyrone’s face, but it also might have been an artifact of grit on the lense of the hologram emitter.

“And in any case, this is almost over.” He stopped examining the inside of the empty box, and closed it. It closed with a certain  _finality_ , as if the interior was now a separate and distinct and quite-cramped universe unto itself.

“I think our sister, safe and sound and happy with us, forever, is a fair trade for not keeping Pact in an enchanted box until the heat-death of the universe.”

He grinned, the gold glitter of replacement teeth glinting in the fluorescent lighting of the cavern.

“Let’s go make a bargain.”

**_Fin._ **

**Author's Note:**

> This marks the end of my Gravity Falls/Pinecest fanfiction writing, as I'm moving on to other projects. Thank you all so much for your support and comments over the years, and help keep making AO3 and the fandom great!


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